The Joy Luck Club 喜福会

 Released Year: 1993

Directed by 王穎 Wayne Wang

Casted by:

 Kieu Chinh as Suyuan Woo

Tsai Chin as Lindo Jong

France Nuyen as Ying-Ying St. Clair

Lisa Lu as An-Mei Hsu

Ming-Na Wen as June Woo

Tamlyn Tomita as Waverly Jong

Lauren Tom as Lena St. Clair

Rosalind Chao as Rose Hsu Jordan

 Story:

The Joy Luck Club was formed by four women; Lindo Jong, Ying-Ying St. Clair, An-Mei Hsu, and Suyuan Woo, in San Francisco. The members have mainly played mahjong and told each other's stories over the years. They immigrated from China, remarried, and gave birth to children in America. Suyuan's daughter June replaced her when Suyuan died four months before the time the film is set. The mothers have high hopes for their daughters' success, but the daughters struggled through "anxiety feelings of inadequacy and failure." Throughout the film, the mothers and daughters bond by learning to understand each other and overcoming their conflicts.

The film begins with June's short narrative prologue about the swan feather in the opening credits and then her farewell surprise party in San Francisco for June's upcoming reunion with her long-lost twin sisters in China. Among the guests are members of The Joy Luck Club, their daughters, other relatives, and friends. The following characters below narrate their journeys to the audience while they reflect upon their pasts.

Lindo and Waverly

In China, four-year-old Lindo is arranged, by her mother and the matchmaker, to be married to Huang Tai Tai's son when she grows up. When Lindo turns fifteen, her mother sends her to Huang Tai Tai, so Lindo marries Tai Tai's son, Tyan Hu, a pre-pubescent boy who has no interest in her. During four years of childless and loveless marriage, she is frequently abused by her frustrated mother-in-law, who believes Lindo's childlessness is her own fault. Lindo eavesdrops on the servant girl telling her lover that she is pregnant, so Lindo realizes her chance to leave the marriage without dishonor. Later, Lindo purportedly ruins her clothes and then claims that she had a nightmare in which Tyan Hu's ancestors threatened to punish her, Tyan Hu and the matchmaker. Then Lindo claims that the ancestors impregnated the servant girl with Tyan Hu's child. Tai Tai does not believe Lindo until Tai Tai quickly discovers the servant's pregnancy through inspection. Finally, Lindo claims that the matchmaker intentionally wrongly paired Lindo and Tyan Hu for more money. Tai Tai orders the matchmaker out of her family's life, allowing the servant girl to have her marriage. Lindo is able to escape the house and moves to Shanghai.

Years later in America, Lindo has a new husband, a son, and a daughter named Waverly. Aged between six and nine Waverly, has become a chess champion. Annoyed by Lindo using Waverly to "show off" at the streets, Waverly shouts at her mother and decides to quit chess. When she tries to play it again, Waverly loses one chess round, prompting her to retire from chess. Years later, she has a daughter Shoshana from her Chinese ex-husband and is going to marry a Caucasian fiancé, Rich, much to Lindo's chagrin. In order to make Lindo like Rich, Waverly brings him to a family dinner, but he fails to impress them especially by improperly using chopsticks and marinating the dish with a sauce, humiliating Waverly. A while later, at the hair salon, Lindo retells her moments with her own mother, and declares that she likes Rich very much, she then gives marital blessings to Waverly and Rich, prompting her and Waverly to reconcile with each other. At June's farewell party, Rich almost successfully uses a chopstick but accidentally drops a piece, impressing Lindo.

Ying-Ying and Lena

In China, Ying-Ying St. Clair was happily married to Lin-Xiao with a baby boy in China until Lin-Xiao abused her and abandoned her for an opera singer. Overcome by her depression, Ying-Ying drowns her baby son in the bathtub. Years after she immigrated to America, she suffered from trauma and was haunted by her past, frightening her new family, including her daughter Lena. After Ying-Ying finally resolved her years of trauma, Lena shows Ying-Ying around her new apartment with her husband Harold, who is also Lena's boss. Lena is uncomfortable with her financial arrangements with Harold. They split the costs of their life evenly with a list of things that they share, making their home life contentious. Lena feels her husband has no respect for her. Seeing that Lena is unhappy with her marriage, Ying-Ying knocks over a table in the bedroom and causes the vase on it to fall and break. Lena goes to her mother, and admits her unhappiness. Ying-Ying replies that Lena should leave and not come back until he gives her what she wants. At June's farewell party, Lena is shown to have another fiancé and announces her plans to go to Lake Tahoe with him.

An-Mei and Rose

Nine-year-old An-Mei Hsu is reunited with her long-lost mother, who was disowned by her family for her "dalliance" with a wealthy middle-aged man Wu-Tsing shortly after her husband's death, and who arrives to see her dying mother. In order to not lose her again, An-Mei moves out with her mother to Wu-Tsing's house against her relatives' wishes for her to remain with them. She finds that Wu-Tsing has another three wives, making An-Mei's mother the Fourth Wife. Later, she learns that the Second Wife tricked An-Mei's mother into being raped and impregnated by Wu-Tsing. When the relatives did not believe An-Mei's mother and kicked her out, she reluctantly became Wu-Tsing's Fourth Wife as she had nowhere else to turn. After she gave birth to a boy, the Second Wife took him away from her and claimed him as her own. After An-Mei discovers the past, her mother ultimately commits suicide by eating "sticky rice balls" laced with opium, choosing the day of her death carefully to threaten Wu-Tsing with the vengeance of her angry ghost. Afraid of this curse, Wu-Tsing vows to raise An-Mei and her half-brother with great care. When the Second Wife tries to stop Wu-Tsing from letting this happen, An-Mei suddenly destroys the remains of the faux pearl necklace, indicating that An-Mei is aware of the Second Wife's cruelty and manipulation. Second Wife backs down, realizing the trouble she caused for An-Mei's mother and that she lost control of the house.

Years later in America, An-Mei's daughter Rose has been dating her boyfriend Ted Jordan since college. When he confronts his aristocratic mother for insulting Rose mainly due to her race, Rose is impressed and agreed to marry him. During the marriage however, Rose and Ted become distant from each other, and despite their problems Rose remains submissive to Ted. They have a daughter but this does not resolve their marital problems. To make matters worse, Ted cheats on her with another woman. An-Mei compares Rose to her own late mother. To avoid having the same fate, Rose stands up to Ted, reclaiming her strength, by telling him to leave the house and not take a daughter away from her. This compels Ted to take her seriously and not continue taking her for granted. At June's farewell party, Rose shares with Ted a slice of cake and feeds him frosting as they share a loving moment.

Suyuan and June

In World War II, when the Japanese invaded China, Suyuan Woo escaped the invasion with her twin baby daughters. When Suyuan became ill with dysentery during her quest for refuge, her cart breaks down, causing the babies to fall. Near death, Suyuan was unable to carry the babies herself and abandoned them along with all of her other possessions, including a photo of herself. Suyuan survived, but was haunted by the loss of her daughters and never knew what happened to them.

After she remarried in America, Suyuan has high hopes for her new daughter June, but June constantly fails to meet her expectations out of a lack of interest. She performs badly during a piano recital at age nine, and when Suyuan pushes her to continue training to be a concert pianist, June refuses, saying that she wishes herself dead like Suyuan's other daughters. At a dinner party a year before Suyuan's passing, Waverly Jong, June's long-time rival whom she is freelancing for, turns down her business ideas, and Suyuan implies Waverly has more style than June. The following day, June berates Suyuan for her remarks and admits she could never live up to her high expectations. June says that Suyuan is disappointed in her because June dropped out of college, is never married, and does not have a successful career. However, Suyuan gives her a jade necklace and explains that she meant June has a far kinder heart than Waverly and has style that she was born with and that cannot be taught.

Last Easter before the farewell party, June received the news from the Club that the long-lost twins were alive. When June could not understand the twins' letter written in Chinese, Lindo purportedly mistranslated the letter to make June believe that the twins knew about Suyuan's death and their long-lost half-sister June. When the farewell party ends, Lindo confesses that she wrote letters to the twins and then signed Suyuan's name. June begs Lindo to tell them the truth, but Lindo will not interfere further because the twin sisters still believe Suyuan is alive and that June must tell them herself. When she arrives in China to meet her sisters, June tells them the truth about Suyuan, and embraces them. In finally accepting her Chinese culture, June is able to make peace with her deceased mother.

 L² Scored: 9/10

L² Comment:

A very good movie and i love it so much, the stories of 4 pairs of mother-daughter which also realted to the mother & mother's mother. The concept of the storyline is based on the novel by Amy Tan and it is so good, i recommend all of ya to watch it...

Farewell My Concubine 霸王别姬

Released Year: 1993
Directed by 陈凯歌 KaiGe-Chen

Casted by:
张国荣 Leslie Cheung as 程蝶衣 Die
张丰毅 FengYi-Chang as 段小楼 Lou
巩俐 Gong Li as 菊仙 Ju
葛优 Ge You as 袁四爷 Yuan
Story:

In 1977, the year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, two men in Beijing Opera costumes, one in a female role, the other as a stage king, enter the performance hall and are greeted by a voice off camera—they haven't performed in eleven years—and a single spot light falls on them.

The scene, now shot in sepia, cuts to 1924. A woman walks hurriedly with a small child in her arms through a crowded Chinese market. A man, recognizing her, tries to speak to her but she roughly pushes him off as he shouts,"Whore!" A crowd is watching a troupe of boys from a Beijing opera training school perform for coins in the street, supervised by their aging director, Master Guan. One of the boys, Laizi, tries to run away, and the crowd is insulted. The leader, a possible warlord, begins pushing around Master Guan. One of the troupe, Shitou (meaning "stone"), shames the crowd by breaking a brick on his head. The crowd cheers, but Shitou is later punished for pulling such a stunt.

The mother takes the boy to the troupe house but Master Guan refuses him because of a birth defect, a superfluous finger. Throughout the scene you can hear a peddler calling out his skill as a knife sharpener. Apparently the mother goes to him to get a sharp knife. As the child whimpers that his defective hand is freezing she covers his eyes with a scarf and cuts off the extra finger. There is silence, perhaps because his hand was numb from the cold, then a cut to a distressed child crying as his mother carries him back to the school. She signs the contract with his thumb print in blood and leaves without a word. Shitou welcomes him as "Douzi" [Bean]. The two boys soon become good friends.

A few years later. Laizi, craving freedom and candied crab apples, and Douzi escape, but return after seeing a performance by an opera master that makes Laizi weep and ask how they became stars, and how much they had to endure to become stars. Another reason for Douzi to return is his longing for Shitou. As Master Guan brutally beats Shitou for allowing the escape of Laizi and Douzi, Laizi hides to eat his crab apples. Douzi walks to the beating bench to accept his punishment. Master Guan begins to beat him mercilessly, but Douzi never screams though Shitou begs him to say he is sorry. Shitou charges the master but the assistant yells for the master to come: Laizi has hanged himself.

Douzi attaches himself to Shitou and is trained to play Dan (female) roles. He practices the monologue "Dreaming of the World Outside the Nunnery," but when he is to say, "I am by nature a girl, not a boy" he instead says "I am by nature a boy..." The monologue comes from the kunqu "The Record of an Evil Sea," kuhai (the Evil Sea) being a Buddhist term for a life of sorrow. Shitou learns the jing, a painted-face male lead.

When the famous theatrical agent, Na Kun, a Manchu, visits the troupe, Douzi is brought out to recite his bravura role, but he says again "I am by nature a boy," and the agent begins to leave. With the future of the troupe at risk, Shitou twists a tobacco pipe into Douzi's throat until he gargles in his own blood. Suddenly there is a soft whisper of, "I am by nature a girl... not a boy."

Jump cut to Douzi in full costume at an elaborate stage in front of a large audience in an elaborate private pavilion of the aging Eunuch Zhang, who admires him and his talent. Douzi and Shitou sing the famous duets, and the audience roars.

After their performance, the two are summoned for an audience with Eunuch Zhang. Shitou admires a beautiful sword in Zhang's collection, stating that if he were emperor, Douzi would be his queen. Douzi says that one day he hopes to give Shitou a sword like that. The boys are told Douzi is to meet Zhang alone.

Douzi walks in on the old man in a lascivious embrace with a young girl. Douzi is afraid as the man eyes him up and down. He wishes to find Shitou because,"I have to pee." The old man brings a glass dragon jar, tells him to pee, stares in lusty amazement at the boy's body, and reaches for him. Douzi tries to flee, but Zhang pushes him to the ground. Hours later he emerges, and Shitou cannot get him to say a word. On their way home, Douzi spies a baby abandoned in the street. Master Guan urges Douzi to leave the baby, saying "we each have our own fate, or yuanfen," but Douzi takes him in and eventually trains him.

Douzi and Shitou become stars of Beijing opera and take on the stage names Cheng Dieyi, and Duan Xiaolou. The adult Dieyi is in love with Xiaolou, but the sexual aspects of his affection are not returned. When they become a hit in Beijing, a patron, Yuan Shiqing, slowly courts Dieyi. Xiaolou, in the meantime, takes a liking to Juxian, a headstrong courtesan at the upscale House of Flowers. (Although she is later accused of being a "prostitute", she was somewhat more elevated than Dieyi's mother in the first part of the film).Xiaolou intervenes when a mob of drunk men harass Juxian and conjures up a ruse to get the men to leave her alone, saying that they are announcing their engagement. Juxian later buys her freedom and, deceiving him into thinking she was thrown out, pressures Xiaolou to keep his word. When Xiaolou announces his engagement to Juxian, Dieyi and Xiaolou have a falling out. Dieyi calls her "Pan Jinlian", a "dragon lady" from the novel Golden Lotus. Dieyi takes up with Master Yuan, who gives him Zhang's sword. Master Guan shames them into re-forming the troupe.

The complex relationship between these three characters is then tested in the succession of political upheavals that encompass China from the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The film also follows the fates of Na Kun, who turns his theater troupe over to the new government after 1949, and the abandoned baby, who is trained in the female roles. He is called "Xiao Si", or "Little Fourth Brother", which has the same sound as "little death." They go through Japanese Occupation, Kuomintang regime, Liberation in 1949, as the People's Liberation Army enters the city, and the Cultural Revolution in which the traditional opera is attacked as feudal. The portrayal of these events led the film to be initially banned in China.

"Xiao Si" and Douzi have an argument about "Xiao Si" training and punishment at the end of which "Xiao Si" threatens revenge. On the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Shitou and Juxian are seen burning now contraband literature and clothing. After a few drinks, they rekindle their relationship. The next scene shifts to Shitou being questioned by the communist party on a few unpatriotic words he said years ago and overheard by their manager.

"Xiao Si" is seen in the background seemingly in a position of power. The Beijing opera troupe is taken out for questioning and offered a chance to repent. Under duress, Shitou confesses that Douzi performed for the Japanese and may have had a relationship with Yuan Shiqing. Douzi, enraged, tells the mob that Juxian was a prostitute. Shitou is forced to admit that he married a prostitute but swears that he doesn't love her and will never see her again. Juxian is crushed to hear his words and hangs herself. "Xiao Si" is seen in a gym practicing Concubine Yu's role, happy over having usurped Douzi's position. Communist cadre catch him in the act. His fate is unclear.

The film then jumps back to the first scene. Douzi and Shitou are practicing Farewell My Concubine. Their relationship seems to have mended since the tribunal and suicide of Shitou's wife. They exchange a smile and Shitou begins with the line that gave Douzi trouble forty years ago. Douzi makes the same error of finishing the line with he is not a girl. Shitou corrects him and they continue practicing. Douzi then commits suicide by sword in the same manner as in the play.

L² Scored: 8.5/10

L² Comment:

A very good film from fiction as the same name by novelist Lilian Lee Bik-Wah. In this film, Leslie Cheung definitely outshine all the others actors and actresses. So damn charming when he's in the chinese-opera makeup. Expression and twist and turn of the storyline has push the film up to a high level.

A 3 hour film is a bit short to show the whole life of Chen Die Yi, really marvelous. 2 thumbs up :)